War and Picturebooks

Sometimes, you just aren't up to the challenge. There are days when I'm brilliant in class and there are days when I just can't be bothered. Last week we were discussing the depiction of war in picturebooks. The class wasn't one of our best and the discussion was a bit too eurocentric. There were moments when I wanted to blurt out, hey, WW2 happened to us too. But I guess, considering that so many of my friends were Japanese, bringing up WW2 in Asia would be touchy. But this is what I thought after that dreadfully stale discussion.
Some primary texts: Rose Blanche, The Tin Pot General and the Iron Lady, Erika's Story, Let the Celebrations Begin, The Hiroshima Story...
Seconday reading: Adrienne Kertzer's Saving the Picture: Holocaust Photographs in Children's Books (Lion and the Unicorn)
Kertzer built up on an idea from Susan Sontag-- that looking at photographs is putting ourselves "into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge." When you look at a photograph, by virtue of verisimilitude, you feel like you know what happened. But the truth is, without contextualizing a photograph, you know jack-shit. But photographs are powerful just the same. And the power of most holocaust picutrebooks lies partly in the illustrations which are based on certain iconic photographs of WW2. These photographs lend a sense of authenticity to a picturebook but they are modified by where and how they are placed in the text, the way they are framed and captioned. (More for an adult, i think) the irony and power of such photographs lies in the fact that these images may be used to give messages of hope to the children who view them, but we (adults and maybe children, too) know that these are often pictures of people who most probably perished. There seems to be an unwritten rule that we can only talk about the Holocaust a certain way-- that it was an irredeemable tragedy and that not a glimmer of hope was there. And that this is also how we should depict them in picturebooks. In black and white and muted sombre colours so no one will mistake the gravity of this situation.

So here are are a few interesting points brought up.
Jackie: I don't agree that you should only depict it a certain way. I used to imagine my grandparents living in a world that was black and white... (Keeping it in black and white could serve to distance the event, a way for us to distance ourselves from the past.)
Sara: the use of black and white is not how people experienced the holocaust, they saw it in colour. but black and white was the medium of the time. so are we meant to see the holocaust from the eyes of people who'd been through it or through the eyes of people who witnessed it in the news and such? [How different periods in history have a certain look to them when we view them through paintings and film and photographs...]
Polly: using the same iconic images to represent an experience can desensitize the audience [in the way of the cliche...]

So we reviewed the books. And we got stuck on the same points over and over again. And i was thinking God get on with this... But I was also trying ot think about WW2 children's literature in general from an asian perspective. As far as i know, WW2 in japanese books is mostly on hiroshima. Like the question brought up by Holocaust children's books, what stories do we pass on to our kids? What is worth telling and HOW do we tell them? Are Japanese children ever taught about what went on when their soldiers went to the Philippines, Korea, Nanking in China? If we have picturebooks about the holocaust, do we have picturebooks about the Rape of Nanking? If holocaust picturebooks set up children to see the holocaust and WW2 a certain way, what have our own children's books done on the subject of war? Most of the Filipino kid's books on war that i know of are young adult novels. Is this significant? Are we able to talk about WW2 in picturebooks? Do we care to talk about it? And if we begin to discuss war from our point in history, how would we depict it? A lot of holocaust literature draws from the fear and the horror of people who were actually there and this is the point of view that has been passed on, it's almost sacred. But who's version of the story would we be working from if most of the people who were alive in WW2 are gone?

And here's something on iconic photographs. WW2 in Asia has its own. Just from the Rape of Nanking, you have pictures of decapitated heads all in a row, a child about to be beheaded, a river of skulls. If depicting the war in black in white and choosing only to depict it in black and white can serve to hem this experience in the past, the violence of the Nanking photographs rip through the black and white. What do these photographs do? On one hand, yes, they make sure that no one forgets. And no one should, because we shouldn't let it happen again. But at the same time such photographs, like the holocaust photographs, serve to villify an entire nation. My brother's best friend looked at a book of photographs taken during the Rape of Nanking and his immediate reaction was hatred. I didn't experience the war but I FEEL like i did. Or maybe it's "a certain relation to [that] world that feels like knowledge." In nay case when i think about it, i feel disturbed, like it's my war by extension. [My dad was a little boy in WW2. They were going to flee to the mountains with another Chinese family but the night they had to set out, my aunt had to be born. The next day they heard the news: the other family had met soldiers in the mountains. They were wiped out, even the baby.]

One iconic image of the war is taken from the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki. like i said, a lot of japanese children's books about the war are about hiroshima, so that no one will forget. but Yoko said something interesting AFTER the class. the next day, we were talking about it and she said that in the hiroshima book (wc we didn't really talk about and i didn't get to read it for myself) there was this horrific illustration of half-naked, dismembered bodies and it reminded ehr of a Japanese depiction of hell. So i though huh! Do u think the illustrator was using that picture as a basis for his illustration? CHING! That's when we got excited.

check out: http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Atomic/atomic.htm for examples of artwork that might have been inspired Toshi Maruki who made The Hiroshima Story. The books are featured on the sidebar.